Toshiba's burning desire for HD DVD

Toshiba says no way to Blu-ray

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Toshiba has raised the bar slightly higher in the high definition (HD) format war. The manufacturer has released a notebook under its Qosmio range that is equipped with an HD DVD-R drive, further shunning the rival HD Blu-ray format.

The Qosmio G45-AV680 incorporates an HD DVD-R/DVD optical drive, which the manufacturer claims can burn up to 30GB of data onto a HD DVD disc. The drive is also mirrored by a 17in widescreen display with 1080p capability and an HDMI port for connection to an HDTV display.

An HD laptop without some sort of unique or top-of-the-range audio capabilities would be a bit disappointing, so Toshiba has also thrown in four bass speakers, a subwoofer and a 1-bit digital amplifier with Dolby’s Home Theatre technology.

A beefy Intel T7300 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU is built in, along with with 2048MB of DDR2 memory and 320GB of storage – divided up between primary and secondary 160GB drives.

When not wiling away the hours with HD content though, the laptop also provides wireless connectivity over 802.11 a/g/n and has an embedded web cam and microphone.

Connectivity shouldn't be a problem

The laptop also caters for gamers, with Nvidia’s GeForce 8600 GT graphics processing unit hidden under the machine’s glossy black and white shell.

The Toshiba Qosmio G45-AV680 is available in the USA from August. But all this technology will set you back a pretty penny , or $3,200 ($1,600/€2,110) to be exact, so a fingerprint reader is included to keep the laptop secure. No word is yet available on a European release data or price.